Cisco launches CloudVerse cloud strategy

Cisco has gone public with its cloud strategy, a framework called CloudVerse that's designed to cater to all flavours of cloud computing, blends together its software, datacentre and collaboration portfolios.

Cisco has gone public with its cloud strategy, a framework called CloudVerse that's designed to cater to all flavours of cloud computing, blends together its software, datacentre and collaboration portfolios.

It may be a bit surprising that Cisco hasn't outlined a cloud strategy given that its gear is in the middle of most datacentres. But Eric Schoch, senior director for hosted collaboration solutions at Cisco, said the networking giant needed to outline where it thought the market was headed. "Because of our position in the network, it's presupposed that the strategy is there," said Schoch. "But we wanted to publicly announce a strategy that's backed by a belief system where the market is going."

Where's the market going? "To a world of many clouds," argued Cisco.

The Cisco cloud strategy isn't all that surprising since it features many building blocks the company already has. Perhaps the most notable item is that Cisco will offer its networking and datacentre software as a service.

According to Schoch, the move to a cloud and subscription model reflects the reality that some customers may be 35 per cent through a deployment and need cloud services to speed up the roll-out. "There are lots of hybrid scenarios," he said.